Lunatic Weblog

I wrote a kickass opening paragraph but I decided to replace it with this few brief awkward words because the previous words were a bit.. provocative. Anyway, I went on a trip a few days ago.

The destination was Bedugul and.. wait for it.. Jimbaran. It’s like half-a-Bali away, dood, but since I am a very good friend I drove my buddies where they wanted to go. The participants were Gunsou san, Kupit and miss Kupit’s girlfriend.

Yep, you guessed that one right. Me and Gunsou san were a third and fourth wheel.

Kebun Raya Eka Karya Bedugul (I bet some of you didn’t know this official name) was awesome as usual, I needed the fresh oxygen after a full month of breathing my room’s not-so-fresh air. I’ve always liked that particular spot in Kebun Raya, you know that hill overseeing the Beratan lake. Nothing new tho, move along now.

Next stop was Padang Padang Beach, Uluwatu. For those who have been to Bali but never been there, I urge you to visit this site next time. Awesome shallow clear water on white sand and fine looking hanging cliffs, this place is far better than Kuta beach. The fact that not many people visit this place contributes to the serene atmosphere.

Sold? Good.

Last stop was dinner at Cafe Matahari, Jimbaran. Yes yes I know, common sight in Bali, people dining by the beach and so on. But believe it or not, that was only my second time dining in a beachfront restaurant. First time was a couple of years ago when I almost barfed at my friend’s face when he talked to me while eating some sea creature.

The food was okay, the drinks were awesome but the service was a bit disappointing tho. A waiter actually raised his voice tone at one point when we asked why our prawn was not served yet. What a douche. But we wasn’t going to let that douche ruin our night so we decided to be merry instead. Perhaps those cocktails I ordered help too..

Cafe Matahari’s verdict: 7 out of 10.

It’s a bit pricey for food that taste quite usual, not that I was expecting unusual food, mind you. The place was great, on account of the dinner table being set on the beach. And the traditional Balinese dance performance was just another performance to me, but I bet it’d be mindblasting if you’ve never seen it before.

Whoa, when did this blog post turn into a restaurant review? I sidetracked, dammit. Anyhoo, the trip was awesome. Next time let’s bring more people and an inflatable bed. Huzzah, anima over and out.

I went to Klapa Dreamland with friends and the girlfriend.

The fireworks rocked, that had to be the biggest fireworks works I’ve ever seen. New Year celebration on Klapa was a blast, the place was awesome and there was no traffic jam on the way there. Getting a parking spot sucked there, and it took quite a while to order drinks but hey what do you expect from a full club at NYE?

We partied until rain poured around 3am and we went to grab supper. The guys then dropped me and the girlfriend early morning at Sanur beach and then I went to Nusa Lembongan for a full day. Blast blast!

The next day I went back to town and went on a trip to Amuk Bay with Gunsou and the guys. We played watersports at Odyssey, that place was awesome. For you non-swimmers, watersports on Oddyssey are really safe. I myself can’t swim but I survived the whole thing :D

I even went snorkeling! Ha!
Included in the pack were banana boat ride, snorkeling, canoe ride, donut ride, boogie ride etc and lunch buffet. I tried everything but the donut ride because I heard it hurts the ass.

So uh, what did you do?

What other ways could be better to remember what I did on 2009 other than checking my blog archive? Can’t think of any right now, so I’m reading my own blog posts of 2009 while giggling because I was a silly guy.

I started 2009 by moving into an office/workspace in Renon, Denpasar. The first website we designed there was our very own website, divdsgn.com. This was when me and the boys rebranded ourselves as the divdsgn team.

We went on taking new projects thanks to our dear clients’ word of mouth advertising, it’s good to know people were starting to recognize us as web developers. Also, we started working with an Australian based real estate website developer on some really interesting websites.

Work on Trippert has also been wondrous this year, I’ve learned so many things during working on some projects with the guys over there at BD lab.

Whoa that was heavy, on to the love life then.

Me and the girlfriend have been together for over a year now, and 2009 was an awesome year for us. Due to the nature of our relationship – the LDR – we traveled quite a lot this year. Every couple of months I visit her to Jakarta, and every alternate couple of months she visits me here in Bali. Granted, one time we got bored with the 2 towns and decided to just meet in the middle. That was the time we went to Yogyakarta during the Easter holiday.

Next we’re planning to go to more places, including Gili and of course the near-future-destination: Singapore. Yay!

But that’s still a few months ahead. Now I’m just going to be excited because she’s coming over for the new year and we’re escaping to an island.

While we’re on the personal life part, I’ll share a bit about the part when I moved out from a goddamned garage to a real house.

At the same time I also applied for (so called) broadband internet on Global Extreme, so I finally settled at home again. I’m a home worker now, I rarely go out anymore unless it’s to see clients. In fact I’m writing this post now on the couch-potato pose :D

In the beginning of this year I was using the trusty SonyEricsson w900i and I thought I was never going to get rid of it. But then halfway through the year I was tempted to use a Windows Mobile device: HTC Diamond. That phone rocked, specially with the Garmin GPS navigation installed in there. It helped me and the girlfriend when we were lost driving around in Bandung.

But then a couple of months later the need to stay online rose. I started to need push email and gtalk badly, so finally I got a BlackBerry. Oh, right, thanks to the berry I now have a 365 project: a photo a day – http://anima365.tumblr.com/

Hmm.. what else did I do this year.. oh right, I spent one night at the airport!

The very idea of spending the night on the airport was stupid, specially because it’s in Soekarno Hatta, but I met some interesting friends and I learned a lot about traveling. I guess I really really have to travel soon, I’m missing out a lot!

And last night I had a little get together with the high school guys, BBQ night.

Which ended up with some of us boys went to Kuta beach to have a couple of beers and just chat.. and broke some fences, srsly.

Yeah I guess that’s about it, my 2009 so far. I’m guessing there will be more highlights happening on the year end itself because Nana is coming to town, but that deserves another blog post :)

Merry Christmas and have a rocking New Year party, guys!

Whenever the chinese boy is in town, we have a somewhat weird habit that is going somewhere interesting and.. take pictures. This time the pick of “somewhere interesting” was Buyan lake, not the usual side where people camp and all that, but the fishing side of it.

Apparently there are plenty of fish in this lake, I never quite thought about it before. About 20 meters from the lake side the natives built those fishing pods. Funny pods, built from something that looks like dried sugar cane bars as the foundation and the platforms are made of bamboo.

Oh and the water’s green, this must be the color of the algae in there. Right?

It took less than 5 minutes from the lake side to the pod we were in, I figured the time it would take to reach other pods wouldn’t be too far off because they’re only separated 5 meters from each other. We got to the pod by boat. Awesome eh?

The ride was pretty smooth, I enjoyed every second of it perhaps due to me not paddling :p

But the pod itself is pretty small, around 2.5 x 5 meters. The 4 of us had to sit very close to each other to get this picture taken. We took some pictures there, I ate a small cup noodle and we went back. That’s right, nobody bothered to rent a fishing pod, lazy assess :))

Oh an interesting thing! When Mr. Boat Driver dropped us on the pod he said if we wanted to go back to land just call him. He said he would be there on the lake side, on standby.

Sure as fuck he was, but he was facing the other way! LOL! We had to yell, clap our hands and use all force to send telepathy signal to the old geezer when we wanted to go back to land. It took ten minutes to finally succeeded to reach him.

This is Mr. Boat Rider with his scary-looking boat, we didn’t think it could function but it did handsomely. Round trip boat ride from lake side to the pod (including pod rent too, I guess?) is IDR 10k per person. Very reasonable.

If you’re looking for a place to fish or just to relax, you might want to add this one to your list. Here’s the map.

The check-in gate was closed at the airport terminal, so I had to go in from the visitor entrance. I was a bit worried of not finding a place to wait, but lucikly J.Co. was open at that time. As I ordered Mochabella I noticed there was a couple  on one of the tables next to me, chatting.

As usual, I went with my minding-my-own-business act, I turned on my laptop and watched Animaniacs. I didn’t hear it the first time one of J.Co’s employees was calling me because I had my earphone on. He was saying that they’re going to close soon and I had to leave, then I asked if there’s a place where I could wait until the check-in gate opens.

“Di atas ada kayanya tempat duduk, mas.” // “I think there are seats upstairs.”

Packing my laptop, I notice that the J.Co. employee now telling the same thing to the couple sitting on next table. It appeared that he was having difficulties explaining the situation so I said “Hey guys, you’re looking for a place to sit? There are seats upstairs.”

That’s how I met Ron and Sana.

They both are travelers (and turned out they were not a couple) and they have only been in Indonesia for a few weeks. Ron was traveling to Bali to see a friend and Sana was on a very long vacation and Bali is one of her many destinations. They both shared their experience traveling in Indonesia and in other countries, and I shared what I know of Bali – the island where I live in.

While talking to them my mind wanders about the possibilities of where I could travel. Traveling would definitely be fun and I really need to spend more time doing just that. What the hell have I been doing all this time? I’ve been missing out, I need to see the world!

Easy to say, difficult to execute. The problem is no other than: money. Every penny I save has already been allocated for. Housing, education (Rega’s and mine), business expenses and other stuffs. Traveling isn’t one of them, traveling is luxurious. I hope someday money won’t be a problem anymore so I can actually take a few weeks off to explore the world.

*pokes @nanashambles*